The Art of Thinking Clearly: Better Thinking, Better Decisions

See also Story Bias (ch. 13); News Illusion (ch. 99); Linking Bias (ch. 22)

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88
YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE OVERLOOKING
Illusion of Attention
After heavy rains in the south of England, a river in a small village overflowed its
banks. The police closed the ford, the shallow part of the river where vehicles
cross, and diverted traffic. The crossing stayed closed for two weeks, but each
day at least one car drove past the warning sign and into the rushing water. The
drivers were so focused on their car’s navigation systems that they didn’t notice
what was right in front of them.
In the 1990s, Harvard psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris
filmed two teams of students passing basketballs back and forth. One team wore
black T-shirts, the other white. The short clip, ‘The Monkey Business Illusion’, is
available on YouTube. (Take a look before reading on.) In the video, viewers are
asked to count how many times the players in white T-shirts pass the ball. Both
teams move in circles, weaving in and out, passing back and forth. Suddenly, in
the middle of the video, something bizarre happens: a student dressed as a
gorilla walks into the centre of the room, pounds his chest and promptly
disappears again. At the end, you are asked if you noticed anything unusual. Half
the viewers shake their heads in astonishment. Gorilla? What gorilla?
The monkey business test is considered one of the most famous experiments
in psychology and demonstrates the so-called 
illusion
of attention
: we are
confident that we notice everything that takes place in front of us. But in reality, we
often see only what we are focusing on – in this case, the passes made by the
team in white. Unexpected, unnoticed interruptions can be as large and
conspicuous as a gorilla.
The 
illusion
of attention
can be precarious, for example, when making a phone
call while driving. Most of the time doing so poses no problems. The call does not
negatively influence the straightforward task of keeping the car in the middle of
the lane and braking when a car in front does. But as soon as an unanticipated
event takes place, such as a child running across the street, your attention is too
stretched to react in time. Studies show that drivers’ reactions are equally slow
when using a cellphone as when under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

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Furthermore, it does not matter whether you hold the phone with one hand, jam it
between your shoulder and jaw, or use a hands-free kit: your responsiveness to
unexpected events is still compromised.
Perhaps you know the expression ‘the elephant in the room’. It refers to an
obvious subject that nobody wants to discuss. A kind of taboo. In contrast, let us
define what ‘the gorilla in the room’ is: a topic that is of the utmost importance and
urgency, and that we absolutely need to address, but nobody knows about it.
Take the case of Swissair, a company that was so fixated on expansion that it
overlooked its evaporating liquidity and went bankrupt in 2001. Or the
mismanagement in the Eastern bloc that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Or the
risks on banks’ books that up until 2007 nobody paid any attention to. Such
gorillas stomp around right in front of us – and we barely spot them.
It’s not the case that we miss every extraordinary event. The crux of the matter
is that whatever we fail to notice remains unheeded. Therefore, we have no idea
what we are overlooking. This is exactly why we still cling to the dangerous
illusion that we perceive everything of importance.
Purge yourself of the 
illusion
of attention
every now and then. Confront all
possible and seemingly impossible scenarios. What unexpected events might
happen? What lurks beside and behind the burning issues? What is no one
addressing? Pay attention to silences as much as you respond to noises. Check
the periphery, not just the centre. Think the unthinkable. Something unusual can
be huge; we still may not see it. Being big and distinctive is not enough to be
seen. The unusual and huge thing must be expected.